Blood and Bone (8 page)
ROBERT SPANGLER SAT low in his car in the alleyway just south of Locust Street. He had parked within a wide shadow falling upon the cobbled street, so the interior of his car was quite dark. The spot was a bit far from the door he was watching, but this way a glance down the street from that same door would catch the car, yes, but nothing of the man inside, sitting low and waiting. In the shadows. Sometimes it seemed that within every individual moment of his life lay the ghost of the whole.
The call had come sooner than he’d expected. “Bobby dear,” she had said over the phone, in a voice that wrapped around his gut like an anaconda, “I thought you said there wouldn’t be any problems.”
Robert had closed his eyes and felt her disappointment wash over him like a wave of cold seawater. The sensation had become so familiar throughout the course of his life that it was almost comforting, an assurance that the immutable laws of the universe remained safely intact. “What kind of problems?”
“It’s the son of that lawyer, the one you took care of so long ago.” “Byrne? Okay. What about him?”
“He’s been asking questions. I never liked school much, Bobby, did you know that? All those questions just served to infuriate me. I only wanted answers.”
“Where were these questions asked?”
“At the legal offices where you had your meeting with our friend a few nights ago. The son was turned away, thankfully.”
“Better had he been let inside.”
“Really? Why is that, dear?”
“Because I purposely made contact with the boy and mentioned the O’Malley file. He’s simply looking for it as I intended him to.”
“But, Bobby dear, why ever in the world would you do something so stupid?”
“Our friend indicated that the lawyer Byrne might have taken some files out of the office before he died. I was concerned the boy might know where they were, so I set him on the trail. But his showing up at the office means he doesn’t know anything more than we do.”
“Don’t get too clever, Bobby. It doesn’t suit you.”
“My guess is he’s given up already. But even if he tries to break in, he’ll find nothing and slink off. Either way he won’t cause a problem.”
“Make sure that he doesn’t,” she said. “Make sure that he disappears. And don’t be afraid of giving him a nudge. This is no time for gentleness.” The click of her hanging up on him was like the disapproving cluck of her tongue. No matter how many times he heard it, it never failed to bite.
And it was that bite that chased him here in the middle of the night, here in the shadows, outside the rear door of the building that housed the offices of Byrne & Toth where just a few days before he had killed a man and tasted anew the sweet acid of his obeisance toward her, waiting now for the son of Liam Byrne.
Robert had been impressed by the Byrne boy’s size—he was a big, handsome kid with broad shoulders—and admired the way he flirted with the pretty cop, but close up there had been something wet in the eyes and soft in the mouth. Realistically, they didn’t have much to fear from such weakness, but it was hard to make her appreciate that. She never understood people, only the geometry of things. The boy was loose, he was a threat, and so she would have her Bobby deal with him. Just a nudge, she had said, a nudge to make him disappear, and Robert knew very well what she meant by that. And even if she didn’t expect him to go so far, a nudge might only serve to waken him. And if he did awaken, it would have to end in the same way.
But Robert didn’t want to go through it again, didn’t want that taste in his mouth anymore. He had thought it through and come up with an idea that might just satisfy them both. Which was why he was here, sitting in the shadows, hoping the boy fell into his little trap.
Wait, there, by the door, what was that? A pair of silhouettes, a flash of something, and then a beam wavering as it directed itself up and down and over and around until it focused on the doorknob and the lock above it.
Robert had to say this for the boy, he had more initiative than Robert had given him credit for. And he hadn’t made Robert wait long.
SKITCH WAS DRUNK. You could tell by the way he laughed when one of his lock-picking tools fell to the cement in front of the door.
And when Kyle tipped the flashlight down, bent over to help the search for the missing implement, and banged his head into Skitch’s— resounding like two coconuts smashing one against the other—you could figure that Kyle was a little drunk, too.
“Ow, bro.”
“Dude,” said Kyle.
“Just hold the light steady.”
“I’m trying. What’s taking so long?”
“This lock is just kinda tricky.”
“I guess they’re all tricky after six beers.”
“No, bro, the beer helps. It sensitizes the fingers. What time is it
anyway?”
“Two.”
“Still early. You want to hit a club after this?”
“Whatever.”
“Okay, got it. Now just hold the light steady and stop breathing.” “Breathing?”
“You’re breathing too loud. I need to hear the clicks.” “The clicks of the wheels turning in your head?”
“The pins, bro. Now, shut up and hold your breath.”
Skitch was squatting on his haunches. His eyes were scrunched
closed as he manipulated the picks carefully in the lock of the rear door of the stone building that housed the offices of Byrne & Toth. This wasn’t the most brilliant idea, Kyle knew, breaking into a crime scene in which a murder had occurred only a few nights before, especially with the way that cop had questioned Kyle at Laszlo Toth’s funeral. But when he told Skitch how that little creep Malcolm with the hot wife had barred him from Kyle’s own father’s office, Skitch had turned righteously indignant, and no one did righteous indignat ion better t han Sk itch. “Bastards,” he’d shouted, loud enough to draw stares from all over the bowling alley where they were drinking. And even though Kyle was ready to let the whole thing disappear, after a long bout of fortification with liquid courage and urging by Skitch, he found himself at the rear door of the office building, holding the flashlight as Skitch worked the picks.
You would think it was a fool’s errand, waiting on someone like Skitch, drunk no less, to open a locked door, but Skitch had some surprising skills. He could play the “Too Fat Polka” on the accordion. He could wipe out DiNardo’s on all-you-can-eat crab night. He had once downed a pack of Mentos and half a quart of Diet Coke at the same time, the calamitous results of which showed up on YouTube and went viral. And—twist, click—he could pick a lock like nobody’s business.
“My uncle taught me well,” said Skitch.
“What was he, a locksmith?”
“Hell no,” said Skitch, still squatting as he slowly pushed the door open. “He’s doing time now in West Virginia.”
“Isn’t family a wonderful thing?” said Kyle. “Are we really going to do this?”
“Hell yes,” said Skitch. “This is your father’s office. We’re not going to let that bastard keep you out.”
Kyle stood on the outside of the now-open door, peering through the doorway, wondering at what kinds of feral creatures from his past might lurk there. With a push from Skitch, he stumbled through the doorway. Inside, he took a deep breath, tried to sense his father’s ancient mélange of aromas, smelled only dust and cleaning fluid. Skitch, still squatting, waddled in after him and closed the door.
“Keep the flashlight off for now,” said Skitch. “Nothing looks more suspicious than the beam of a flashlight waving around. You said second floor, right?”
“There are stairs next to the elevator. I think the lobby’s this— Ow! Fricking box.”
“Go slow, bro. Be one with the hall and feel your way.”
“One with the hall,” said Kyle. “I am the hall. Okay, follow me.”
Kyle put his arms in front of him and slowly felt his way along the corridor, moving as quietly as possible. Behind him, Skitch sounded like a drunken mariachi band, banging here, cursing there, tripping his way forward.
The faintest hint of light slipped around the thin edges of a doorframe just ahead of Kyle. He reached out until he felt the wood, lowered his hand to the knob, opened the door, and stepped into the front lobby, where he had been so rudely rebuffed the morning before. Light brushed faintly through the gauze-covered windows, illuminating the space enough so that Kyle could get his bearings. The door there, the reception desk there, the elevator and stairs there. “Up this way,” said Kyle, heading past the gleam from the ornate elevator door and toward the stairs.
Slowly he creaked up the staircase, rising higher toward his father’s old office. And as he did, he began to feel anxious and deprived, as though he were trespassing on his father’s oh-so-important life. He felt like an afterthought, like a mistake. It was as if with each rising step the years were peeling away. Until finally, almost at the top of the steps, when he had devolved into the twelve-year-old he had been at his father’s funeral, he stopped, dead.
“Whoa,” said Skitch. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” said Kyle. “I feel weird.”
“Just don’t hurl on the floor, bro. Bad form.”
Skitch climbed past him up the stairs, turned the corner into the office, and flicked on the light switch. A painful brightness poured down the stairs.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Kyle.
“I’m trying to see.”
“We’re breaking in, you idiot.”
“No, we’ve broken in, and we’ve entered. Those were the crimes. Now we’re just here. If the lights are on, it looks like we’re working late. If the lights are off, we’ll be banging into things like the blind Barko sisters.”
“The blind Barko sisters?”
“Don’t ask, but trust me when I tell you they are loads of fun. Are you coming up?”
Kyle took a deep breath and then climbed the rest of the stairs, until he was there, in his father’s old law office, the suite of Byrne & Toth. Not much to see, actually, and quite the disappointment. He didn’t know exactly what he’d expected, something closer to Kat’s opulent offices, maybe, someplace where it made sense for Liam Byrne to want to spend his life rather than with his son. But it wasn’t luxurious or grand, it didn’t echo with great import. It was just a shabby set of offices with old furniture and dingy walls. A pile of white boxes with the name of a document-storage company leaned against one of the walls.
“This is where that old Toth guy got it, right?” said Skitch.
“That’s right,” said Kyle. “In one of these offices.”
“Yowza.”
“Probably that one over there,” said Kyle. “My mother mentioned once that my dad had the corner office. She worked here as a secretary until they hooked up. Then, after my father died, Toth took it over until . . .”
“Yeah, okay. Bang-bang. Now what?”
“Now I guess we look around,” said Kyle. “We’re looking for an old file, the O’Malley file.”
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know, but this O’Malley guy is looking for it, and he promised if he got it, he had something to tell me about my father. Why don’t you check the boxes, and I’ll go through the offices checking out the desks and file cabinets.”
While Skitch rummaged through the boxes as noiselessly as a raccoon in a metal trash can, Kyle went office to office, opening small file cabinets, desk drawers, seeking something, anything, bearing the name O’Malley. Nothing. But with each drawer he looked in, each file name he skimmed past, he felt a strange deflation. As if some vault within him were being emptied out. This sad, dust-ridden office was so different from what he had imagined for so long, it was as if whole swaths of his childhood landscape were being altered.
He stepped into the corner office, Toth’s office, and stood there for a moment, trying to imagine what it might have been like fourteen years ago when his father had held court in that same space. He closed his eyes, spun around slowly, tried to feel his father’s presence. The white hair, the rough voice, the cigarette smoke and spicy cologne that always enveloped him like a fog. Dad, where are you, Dad?
“I finished with the boxes,” said Skitch from the doorway to the office, “and look what I found.”
Kyle snapped open his eyes, saw Skitch holding a file. “O’Malley?”
“Nah. Sorrentino.”
“Sorrentino?”
“Anthony Sorrentino. ‘Tiny Tony’ Sorrentino? Bookmaker extraordinaire. Half the city has placed bets with Tiny Tony, me included. Every time the Eagles lose, he buys another Buick. And this, this here is his last will and testament.”
“So?”
“So it’s interesting, is all. The last will and testament of Tiny Tony Sorrentino. Probably leaves a load to Kotite. And look, in the file with the will is a bunch of betting slips. Old stuff.”
“Let me see.” Kyle took hold of the file, looked through it. The will was dated just months before his father died, and it had his father’s signature on it, along with the John Hancock of this Anthony Sorrentino. The betting slips were also old, old enough to be anyone’s. So who was betting? His father? Toth? Did that have anything to do with what had happened to Toth? Or his father?
“Anything else with Sorrentino’s name on it?”
“No, but the will was in the middle of a batch of files about some company.”
“What was the name?”
“Double Eye, I think it was. Double Eye Investments.”
“Keep that file for me,” said Kyle. “You find anything else?”
“There’s a storage room around the corner with some old metal file cabinets. I looked through what I could. No O’Malley.”
“What do you mean you looked through what you could?”
“There was one file cabinet, and then a gap with some boxes, and then a couple more. From the case numbers on the drawers, it looks like one cabinet is missing.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in a sec. Let me finish looking through here first.”
Kyle did a quick search of Toth’s office, the drawers, the low wooden file cabinets. He glanced out the window, and a flash of dim light caught his gaze. But when he realized it was just a gleam of a streetlight on a metal sign, he was strangely disappointed. What had he expected to see on the Locust Street sidewalk, a mop of gray hair?
In the storage room, it was the old file cabinets that drew Kyle’s interest. They were metal and brown, with fake wood grain, and seemed designed solely to hold documents of great import. He walked up to one. The lock in the upper right corner was sticking out, with a key inside. He opened a drawer filled with old, tightly packed files. He thumbed through them rapidly. No O’Malley. He closed the drawer and stepped back and stared.
“See,” said Skitch, pointing to a gap.
“Yeah, I see,” said Kyle. “So one is missing.”
Kyle thought for a moment. Where would his father have put a file cabinet? He was trying to think it through when he heard something faint, and then not so faint.
The push of a door opening, the patter of shoes across the floor below. Kyle quickly turned to Skitch. Skitch stared back, his eyes widening.
“I guess turning on the lights wasn’t the best idea,” said Skitch softly, even as a shout rose like an explosion up the twisting stairs.
“Police.”